Diko denies shielding Mchunu as police leadership fight spills into Parliament

ANC Member of Parliament Khusela Diko has rejected claims that she is protecting Police Minister Senzo Mchunu at the expense of suspended National Police Commissioner Fannie Masemola, answering the accusation publicly in an interview with SABC News on 25 September 2026.

The accusation comes from the Activists and Citizens Forum, which says Diko, who sits on Parliament’s Ad Hoc Committee, is trying to shift blame for wrongdoing in the South African Police Service onto Masemola.

As SABC News reported on 25 September, the forum’s claim is that Mchunu forced Masemola to disband the Political Killings Task Team. Mchunu is on special leave. Charges against Masemola have been dropped.

That is the substance of the dispute as it stands. The forum has made an allegation. Diko has answered it. Neither the claim nor the answer settles what happened inside the SAPS, and the material available does not establish that Mchunu forced the disbandment, only that the forum says so.

For readers outside the daily workings of the police service, the institutions here matter. The National Commissioner is the accounting officer of the SAPS and answers to the Minister of Police, who in turn answers to Parliament. An ad hoc committee is a temporary structure set up by the National Assembly to examine a specific matter and report back. It carries the same power to summon evidence and question witnesses that standing committees hold. When an MP sits on such a committee and is also the subject of a public accusation about its work, the question of conflict is a legitimate one for the committee itself to manage, and for the Speaker’s office to consider if a formal complaint is laid.

Special leave is a defined arrangement in the public service. It removes a member from active duty for a set period while an employer deals with a matter. It is not a finding of guilt, and it is not a dismissal. Charges being dropped against Masemola is likewise not a finding of innocence on the underlying conduct. It means the National Prosecuting Authority did not proceed on the evidence before it. Those two facts sit alongside each other, and South Africans following the story should hold both without treating either as a verdict.

The Political Killings Task Team is the unit that investigates the assassination of political officeholders and party activists, a category of crime that has cost lives in KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere over successive election cycles. Whether that unit is functioning, who staffs it and how its cases are referred to the NPA is not an administrative detail. It is the difference between investigations that produce arrests and prosecutions and investigations that quietly stop. That is why a claim about its disbandment carries weight beyond the personalities involved.

The police service has not been idle on this front. The SAPS has run dedicated operations against contract killings and has secured convictions in a number of political murder cases in recent years, work that is frequently under-reported. The question raised by the forum is whether that capability was weakened, and by whom. The answer belongs in evidence before the committee, not in a press exchange.

Ordinary South Africans will notice this story in a specific way. When senior police leadership is in dispute, the effect is felt at station level. Priorities shift, transfers slow, specialised units lose direction, and cases that need a senior signature wait. That is the practical cost of a leadership vacuum, and it is the reason the committee’s work matters more than the argument about who briefed whom.

Parliament’s ad hoc committee is the correct forum for the underlying questions. It can call Mchunu, it can call Masemola, and it can call the former members of the task team. If the forum’s claim is right, that is where it should be proved. If it is wrong, that is where it should be shown to be wrong. Either way, the record should be made public, and the committee should say when it will sit and what it intends to table.

Diko has now put her answer on the record. The next step belongs to the committee, and to whoever holds the evidence.

Source: SABC News, Khuselo Diko responds to claims she’s protecting Police Minister Senzo Mchunu.